Laozi

Philosopher.

Laozi (604 BC?–???), Chinese philosopher. Best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching. His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of philosophical Taoism.

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Sources:

1.) "It is ridiculous to describe that Laozi had started the Dao religion. In fact Laozi is much more sympathetic to atheism than even Greek philosophers in general. To the most, like Buddha and philosophers of Enlightenment, Laoism is agnostic about God." Chen Lee Sun, Laozi's Daodejing-From the Chinese Hermeneutical and the Western Philosophical Perspectives: The English and Chinese Translations Based on Laozi's Original Daoism (2011), page 119.

2.) Joseph Needham (1956). "The Sceptical Tradition". Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge University Press. p. 366. ISBN 9780521058001. "During the Han, Confucianism separated into two rather sharply contrasting currents. 'When Confucianism was established as a "State religion" in the —2nd century, it was not agnostic Confucianism, but theistic Mohism in a Confucian disguise. And when Taoism as a religion arose in the + 2nd century, it was no longer the naturalism and atheism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, but theistic Mohism together with a thousand superstitious features from the religion of the common people' (Hu Shih, 4)."